Message in a bottle: Alek's story

This is the story of Alek, a 10-year-old boy from Kentucky (USA) who found something very special last September 2021 on a beach in Florida, where he summers with his parents. We are talking about a glass bottle, but not a normal one: it contained a handwritten letter inside! For a moment the scenario of his life changed, as if he were a castaway on a desert island.

In fact, Alek's surprise at finding the bottle was so great that he didn't dare open it at that moment. He needed to be surrounded by the friends with whom he shared his summer evenings, who were no longer there that year. Therefore, he waited a whole year to open the bottle with them.

And twelve months later the moment arrived. At that precise instant, nerves ruled the pulse of each of the friends, who had unwittingly become the protagonists of a beautiful story worthy of appearing on the big screen. What they had in their hands was practically a treasure for them, and according to the little information they had, it could have been given to them by Neptune himself, who knows why.

After opening the bottle, Alek and his friends used the translator to understand the message contained in it. It was written in Spanish, a language unknown to them. It was the language of the group of scientists from different Spanish research centers, including the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), the Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDAEA-CSIC) and the University of Vigo (UV), who wrote the letter.

The group would have launched the bottle in December 2020, just after crossing the Equator during an oceanographic campaign that sought to study the impact of some pollutants, as well as organic matter of anthropogenic origin, on the ocean.

The handwritten letter contained information and photographs about the campaign and its participants, as well as their emails so that whoever found it could contact them.

6,000 kilometers adrift

When Alek found it, the bottle had travelled no less than 6,000 kilometres adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, following the rhythm of the two main currents that rule the circulation of this basin: the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic.

These currents are responsible for transporting warm water from the tropics to the poles and doing the same with the cold polar waters, which has a major influence on the climate. In fact, it is these currents, and specifically the North Atlantic current, which explains, among other things, why winters are much colder in New York than in Barcelona, being both cities located at the same latitude.

Well, it was this same current that transported Alek's bottle from the equator to Florida, located approximately 30o north latitude. If it had been thrown at another time, no one knows what would have happened, since, although these currents have well-defined tempos and trajectories, in recent decades they have been losing some of the stability that characterized them due to the progressive increase in temperatures, among other factors.

But leaving aside the effects on the ocean of our footprint on Earth, this is a story of hope. Alek's discovery not only made his vacation a little more exciting, but the fact of believing that someone would find it gave strength to the crew of the Sarmiento de Gamboa -the oceanographic vessel with which the campaign was carried out-, which began its voyage in Vigo and ended it in Punta Arenas (Chile), thus covering half of the Atlantic.